What connects seemingly disparate works such as The Silence of the Lambs, Cape Fear, Mad Men, and Seinfeld? It is the philosophy of nihilism, first popularized by Friedrich Nietzsche in the late 19th century. But in the last few decades, how did it become the dominant worldview of Hollywood? In 1999, Dr. Thomas S. Hibbs, currently the Distinguished Professor of Ethics & Culture and Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University, wrote the original version of Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture. Last month, Baylor University released an updated version of the book, which explores shows and films that have debuted since Hibbs’ original work was published. In this half-hour interview, Hibbs discusses:

How post-WWII Hollywood originally explicitly rejected Nietzsche and nihilism, before ultimately embracing him with open arms.

Why horror movies eventually eradicated God for charming nihilists who fashion their morality as “beyond good and evil,” such as Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Seinfeld: the sunny side of nihilism.

How man successfully threw off the encumbrances of authority and tradition only to find himself subject to new, more devious, and more intractable forms of tyranny.

How aesthetics came to usurp morality.

Mad Men’s Don Draper: the man in the gray nihilistic suit.

Can Hollywood move beyond nihilism?

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Blogging since 2002, affiliated with PJM since 2005, where he is currently a columnist, San Jose Editor, and founder of PJM's Lifestyle blog. Over the past 15 years, Ed has contributed articles to National Review Online, the Weekly Standard.com, Right Wing News, the New Individualist, Blogcritics, Modernism, Videomaker, Servo, Audio/Video Interiors, Electronic House, PC World, Computer Music, Vintage Guitar, and Guitar World.

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36 Comments, 12 Threads

This gentleman obviously has something to say but his views are not presented clearly. Also, I find it interesting that he would take up so much of his time watching television. He must truly enjoy his study of nihilism. I could never watch more than a minute of Seinfeld because the show was just plain boring. Madmen, like House, was interesting for a few episodes but quickly became boring because every show was just like the last. He is correct about one showman: Alfred Hitchcock, the single entertainer who is never boring and is always exploring the dimensions of human evil.

Pre-WWII Italian Party member and Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci was obviously on to something, when he figured out that while Communism couldn’t likely win a stand up military battle against the West, and its ideas were not sufficiently appealing, it could win if it very patiently, and largely peacefully, used the new technical means available—radio, mass printing, movies (and later TV, and the Internet) to spread Propaganda disseminated by key elites and opinion makers—academics, public figures, artists, playwrights, celebrities– in movies, books, lectures, television shows, plays, popular entertainment and culture, and now the Internet and things like video games—to “re-brand” Communism, and to wage and spread a total spectrum subversive attack against all of the basic building blocks of bourgeois societies in order to “change the nature of the “audience”; those future generations who would replace that “Greatest Generation” that had heard their argument and massively rejected Communism.

“Change the nature of the audience” by very systematically—through generations of patient work—and in a “conspiracy of shared values” by those on the Left—attacking, subverting, parasitizing, and destroying, obscuring, or replacing (“re-framing,” and re-imagining,” and” de-valorizing”) the foundational ideas and key building blocks of those bourgeois societies—-the fundamental, key building blocks of the Family, Marriage, Sexuality, and the relations between the Sexes, the Church, Education, traditional History, the prevailing Ethos and Value system, the Law, the Arts and Popular Culture—until the new “audience,”—supposedly “better educated” but in fact blinkered, hobbled, and robbed of real education and analytical tools, more “peaceful” but in fact more violent, supposedly more “knowledgeable” but in fact much more propagandized and deliberately misled, supposedly more “aware” but in fact stripped of vision, supposedly more “tolerant” but in fact more intolerant, more “free” than ever but in fact more constrained, supposedly more ”cultured” but in fact more barbarous, Balkanized, confused, mislead, and divided against itself and stripped of its former certainties, knowledge, history, memory, guideposts, and analytical tools and, now, much more easily deceived and led—this new audience would find the arguments of the Left and a “re branded” Communism now much more unobjectionable, acceptable, and perhaps even appealing. And the evidence of the success of this plan of attack against “the audience”—i.e. that would be “us”– can be seen all around us, and every day.

Hollywood and popular culture have played a massive and indispensable role in this generations long, patient, gradual subversion and replacement operation, this “Transformation” of the “audience,” its knowledge, its understanding of the world, and its values, and the discussion above illustrated just one strand in the Left’s patiently woven and destructive, nihilistic tapestry that they are presenting as a picture of the real world and its meaning—or lack thereof.

For” if you believe in nothing, you will believe in anything,” including the Communism they are still trying to sell.

Thanks for the compliment, and the comment is mine alone, and not a cut and paste job from the work of someone else.

P.S.–I think that one of the key aims of the broad spectrum Gramscian attack that I discuss above is to also change the prevailing feeling, the “mood” of the audience, from one of relative happiness, satisfaction, and content to one of unease, unhappiness, and dissatisfaction, to tear apart the traditional social fabric, to create, exacerbate, and maximize conflict and alienation–to quote Saul Alinsky–”to rub raw the wounds of discontent,” because an “audience” which is uneasy, unhappy, angry, and dissatisfied is much easier to lead and to rouse to action (and to violence), and can be much more easily “organized,” is likely much more desperate than in the past, and much more likely, then, to go for and accept what would formerly have been seen as radical solutions i.e. those offered by the Left and Communism.

Thus, the Left’s attack against the traditional family, its ethos, its structure, and its functioning, against traditional roles within that family, and the relationship between the sexes; knowing that, if they could disrupt this key and central foundation upon which all else in bourgeois societies rests, then the battle would be half won. Unfortunately, parallel WWII and post—WWII socio-economic and technological developments potentiated and made this Gramscian attack even more broadly and deeply successful.

Result, a large increase in the number of people who are increasingly dissatisfied with their families, their home lives, and their roles in life, and people who would have normally adhered to, sought out, and relied on Religion (or Philosophy) for comfort and direction, as a grounding, centering, and guiding force in their lives.

But, of course, that full spectrum Gramscian attack–employing Postmodern thought as one of its major weapons–was also directed against Religion, and Philosophy, and all ethical and value structures as well and, without these traditional sources of comfort and guidance—and the standards and measuring sticks they provided to judge things, to “discriminate”* good from evil, light from dark, the beautiful from the ugly–and now increasingly dissatisfied and alienated from what had formerly been much more satisfactory families and home life–dealing with a heightened battle over familial, economic, and societal roles, Feminism and “the battle between the sexes,” people have become un-moored, rudderless, adrift, alienated, and along comes the Left and Communism, offering new solutions to all of these problems and conflicts (which it created or exacerbated) and arguing that its solutions and its outlook will fill the void and give direction.
*Off course, as Orwell so powerfully pointed out, it was an indispensable and essential part of this Gramscian attack, to attack and subvert language, too. Thus, words that were formally seen as good like “discriminate”—as in the sense of measuring things against some standard, and then ranking them as good, better, and best, was now to be seen as offensive, illegitimate, a way for those in power to discriminate against those without power, and “discriminatory”; and thus the advent of Political Correctness and university “speech codes.”

The glamorous, appealing villain started (in the West) with Milton’s Satan. Hannibal Lector is just one of the more recent iterations.

the only movie villain I can recall who had NO redeeming or appealing qualities is Edward G. Robinson’s “Rico.” Most, like Cagney’s “Public Enemy” possess some kind of physical grace, sexual appeal, sense of humor, good looks, genius — something attractive. Not “Rico”. Not only was it “the end of Rico” but “Rico was the end” and the beginning of the 100% horrible bad guy.

Seinfeld: I have never been able to sit through an entire episode. That show may be the greatest source of anti-Semitism today.

@Indio: No offense intended, but I find it amusing when someone claims his “understanding” of Nietzsche is “correct,” and someone else’s “understanding” of Nietzsche is “incorrect.” Nietzsche’s philosophy is nothing if not complex, filled with apparent self-contradictions, and intended to shock. It’s hardly surprising that different readers come away with very different understandings.

But even assuming there is a “right” and “wrong” way to understand Nietzsche, why do you describe him as a “critic” of nihilism? Is it because Neitzsche’s “ubermensch” imposes his own self-created “morality” on society? But if so, doesn’t Nietzsche also argue (a) that ubermensch’s “morality” is no more “true” or “false” than any other morality, (b) that ubermensch’s “morality” is only sustained through his exercise of power over other humans, and (c) that ubermensch inherently understands all of this? If so, how is Nietzschean “morality” substantively different from nihilism?

Why would someone describe Nietzsche as an anti-Nihilist?
Perhaps because he consistently describes Nihilism as a worthless system, unworthy of human beings.

No, it is not because the Overman imposes his own system of morality on society.
The Overman does no such thing.
The Overman creates a new system of morality precisely because the Nihilists have destroyed all existing systems of morality, and thus a new on is needed.

No, Nietzsche does not argue that the Overman’s morality is no more true or false than any other.
He argues that the Overman, by embracing the creative impulse of humanity is in fact capable of creating a morality that is significant more true than a morality created by either those who prey on humanity, those who accept permanent victim status, or those who give up and believe in nothing.

No, Nietzsche does not argue that the Overman is sustained only by exercising power over others. That is the province of the morality of predators.
The Overman’s morality is sustained by the benefits it brings to others, as well as to the Overman. The Overman’s morality is in fact the morality of Enlightened Self Interest.

Yes, the Overman will understand the value of Enlightened Self Interest, and how he can advance himself by advancing others.
He will not understand the false premises you suggest.

Given that the Overman is predicated on creativity rather than nothingness, in what way is it not diametrically opposed to Nihilism?

Pretty much the way things were after the American Revolution, when people looked at the federal republic the Founders set up and dismissed the silly experiment in unalienable rights and democratic elections.

Or perhaps the way things are now, with people who still believe in American Exceptionalism and those unalienable rights the Founders believed in fighting against creeping Socialism and Sharia.

Although of course both will maintain a grounding in Judeo-Christian principles and morality, the rest remains the same.

Granted, that will not be any utopia, but then Nietzsche never wrote about a utopia, and indeed declared openly that what he liked best in men was that they were not the Overman, and just had a potential they must work at.

The Overman represents exactly the sort of self-reliant individual the Founders and early frontiersmen were, working to build a new country, helping their neighbors because they knew it was always to their benefit to have strong, responsible, men dedicated to building up as neighbors, and relying on themselves rather than government to define the limits of law and propriety.

Yes, there is a caveat regarding the different views on faith between Nietzsche and the Founders, but that does not alter the fundamental nature of the character of the people they both admired.
And of course people accused, and still accuse, Jefferson and other proto-Unitarians among the Founders of being atheists and worse, so even that element is not so different.

What a curious comment. My primary point was that there is no single correct “understanding” of Nietzsche. I made no exception for myself. Your statement that I don’t “understand” Nietzsche is a tautology. By definition, I do not “understand” Nietzsche.

As to your own “understanding” of Nietzsche, I find it extremely unconvincing. In particular, your comparison of Nietzsche to the American Founders is preposterous. Nietzsche did not particularly value reason (he mocked “Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”); he argued that “truth” was fluid (“What if truth were a woman — what then?”); he generally despised belief in God; and he stressed the “will to power” as the fundamental motivator of men. He therefore would have found the key concept of the Declaration of Independence — to the effect that “We find these truths to be self-evident, that all men are…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” — to be folly.

Regardless of whether Nietzsche rejected nihilism, the end result of his philosophy — as a practical matter — is nihilism.

Three of your five questions were based on premises that are fundamentally wrong.
Not subjective interpretations, but simply wrong.
Your initial question reflected an overall lack of appreciation of the full scope of what Nietzsche wrote.
That is not a tautology; that is you using a logical fallacy of your inability to understand Nietzsche to “prove” that no one can understand Nietzsche.

In fact the Founders did precisely what Nietzsche suggested people do – they created a set of new values.
They found the existing values of submission to a distant and unresponsive government to be unacceptable. They could have rejected all concept of morality as a result. Instead they chose to create a new system, based on individual self-worth.
Sure they predicated it on an external basis, though peculiarly they failed to specifically name a religion, and they did not predicate their values on any promise of divine reward or threat of divine punishment.
While that means they are not “orthodox” Nietzscheans it certainly places them overwhelmingly closer to his ideals than anything involving Nihilism.

So ultimately no, the end result of Nietzsche is not Nihilism, but a restoration of belief in the community and the development of it.

Actually, I was specifically referring to the presentation of Nietzsche in the audio by Professor Hibbs. I believe that it is an unfortunate simplification, and distortion, of Nietzsche’s ideas. I concur that Nietzsche was a complex thinker, who is also ambivalent and ambiguous at times. However, I think there are some good arguments in favor of the idea that Nietzsche was a critic, as well as an observer, of nihilism.

I was not responding directly about the issues you raise, although they are interesting, but only to Nietzsche’s discussion in the first twenty pages or so of The Will to Power. I read these passages as a critique of nihilism not a promotion of it since he characterizes nihilism as the culmination or “extreme expression” of cultural trends he assails in many places in his writings, such as Christianity, science, and socialism. However, I am willing to listen to arguments to the contrary. In the audio, Professor Hibbs asserts, but does not provide much evidence, that Nietzsche promotes nihilism. The audio and book seem to mistake Nietzsche’s description of nihilism, and its implications, for a promotion of it.

I am afraid that Professor Hibbs’ comments in the audio – and the discussion of Nietzsche in his book – are rather facile and seem to function more as a “straw man” that sets up his critique of “shows about nothing” and, more broadly, popular culture. I do not believe that the audio, or the book, are primarily aimed at understanding Nietzsche’s relationship with culture in the modern world.

What I find “amusing” is that the characterization of Nietzsche’s thought in the audio does not include any reference to Nietzsche’s studies about art and culture. The book has only one passing reference to Nietzsche’s relationship with Wagner, which is itself very complex. Is this really the best we can do to understand the very real problems that Professor Hibbs describes?

Finally, you are perplexed about one of Sam’s attributions to you. I am perplexed why you think I believe my view of Nietzsche is the only correct one? I said no such thing. I posted a comment that opposes the perspective in the post and audio because I think there are some shortcomings in the argument that bear more discussion. What I learned from this exchange is that I should explain my perspective, if I feel moved to comment again.

Nietzsche admitted what he perceived to be the fact of Nihilism. He was not an advocate for Nihilism, but he believed it to be a fact of life.

From there, he advanced the idea that individual human beings could, and ought to, of their own Free Will, build their own value systems.

These value systems were built on little but the longing for a satisfaction of an aesthetically pleasing life. In other words, one was encouraged to think, how can I live a life that I would want to live over and over. Nietzsche knew full well that, if that were the criteria, some people would choose that which is traditionally thought of as Good, and some would choose Evil.

While Nietzsche did make it clear that in the absence of any of the morality systems that had been destroyed by the rising tide of Nihilism that people would have to create their own systems, he did more than predicate the new system purely on an aesthetically pleasing life.

He spent a great deal of time addressing what he saw as the three possible bases of morality: that of the predator, that of the prey, and that of the creative.
He thoroughly disparaged the morality of the predator, albeit damning it with faint praise, considering it unsuitable for anyone with even the least pretense to civilization.
He also dismissed the morality of the prey, equating it repeatedly with Christianity, and to a lesser extent Judaism, feeling it unworthy to passively accept the harsh nature of reality.
That leaves only the morality of creativity, which by its nature precludes most of what is “conventionally” regarded as Evil, it being difficult to build while raping and pillaging.

A key thing to remember is that for the most part Nietzsche was actually writing more for Nihilists than for non-Nihilists.
Non-Nihilists had a morality system, even if Nietzsche was less than enamored of it.
Nihilists had none, and so they were the ones who needed to be guided back to having something to believe in.
Yes, they could wind up choosing predator morality if not careful, or drifint into prey morality if they did not have sufficient will – Nietzsche spent time describing that, both in the character of The Last Man, as well as noting the preludes of the Marxist dictatorships. So yes, Nietzsche did appeal to their personal selfishness as a base principle, but he continued to the full concept of Enlightened Self Interest, bringing them away from trading Nihilism for raw Hedonism.

Sam,
Right. He spent his time explaining the Predator and Prey morality systems, and said that people’s moralities were basically ways in which to vaunt their weaknesses as virtues; so that, prey-types vaunted “self-sacrifice” as the ultimate good, and predator-types vaunted strength. Nietzsche spent a lot of time vaunting strength as an ultimate goal as well. What you call “damning with faint praise”, I see as a stage of his Philosophy.

As for your distinction of Creative Morality, I very much like the label you have given it. I think it is accurate. I don’t think Nietzsche ever used that phrase. He referred, as I recall, often, to “We artists” or “We Creators” and described their attributes as being, seemingly, a precursor to “the Overman”.

You begin your comment by saying, “not exactly”. I think you were referring to my characterization of Nietzsche, were you not? What is it in my characterization that you disagree with?

It sounds to me as if you have defined Nietzsche as a European Companion to the Founding Fathers. If that was true, then he would be a descendent of John Locke. I do not recall Nietzsche ever referred to Locke a single time. And, I believe Nietzsche, with his radical rejection of traditional Epistemology and the Self, would not have agreed with Locke on much.

I am interested to hear why it is you believe Nietzsche had so much in common with the American Founding Fathers. Is this a Thesis or a book project you are working on?

Anyway, as to Nietzsche’s view on the morality; I wrote, that the moralities of Individuals (what you would call Cretive moralities) are “built on little but the longing for a satisfaction of an aesthetically pleasing life.” I meant that as shorthand for Nietzsche’s vision of the Eternal Recurrence; “My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants to have nothing different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear the necessary, still less to conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness before the necessary—but to love it.”

Yes, Nietzsche used several phrases, including a reference to the “creative child”, but they all pretty much came down to placing “creating” as the only “legitimate” basis for a moral system.

For the “not exactly”, I meant in reference to choosing Good or Evil for an aesthetically pleasing lifestyle.
I believe that was one of Nietzsche’s rhetorical traps. He lets you believe you could choose to be purely selfish, but then reminds you that you rejected the Predator Morality already. He lets you worry that means you have to be purely altruistic, even to your own detriment, but then reminds you that we have rightly rejected the Prey Morality. That leaves you with only the Creative Morality as a way to find true aesthetic satisfaction.
One might then compare this to the fundamental Judeo-Christian concept of leaving the world just a little bit better than you found it, along with his comments regarding Jesus as trying to restore the spirit rather than the letter of the Law, and a lot of his atheism and imcompatibility with religion because of his condemnation of Christianity becomes “curious”.

As for a philisophical descendent, I see Nietzsche as most related to Adam Smith and what he wrote in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith was writing more to those considering abandoning morality to become (proto-)Nihilists, while Nietzsche was writing to the already fallen. Both used reason to demonstrate the objective superiority of what is essentially Enlightened Self Interest – advancing others as a means to advancing yourself – being altruistic out of a sense of greed.

As for the Founders, as I said in other comments, what other “raw” philosopher is there to compare them to?
Certainly they took many things from Locke and Bastiat and others, but ultimately they did not waste time on theoreticals, referenced only a non-specific “Creator” (as did Nietzsche writing of “Companions the Creator wants”), and outright building a new government, based on a new system of values, that considered self-reliance tempered by reputation and the need for voluntary cooperation over forced collectivism to be the paramount values, and with overt protection of those who advanced culture and technology.
Certainly they had more nice things to say about, though “oddly” many of them indulged in a “revaluation” of the principles of their faiths to get back to the “spirit” over the “law”, but – see above.
Obviously they were not Nietzscheans, barring some secret time machine invented by Franklin, and likely Nietzsche did not study them in depth, but their values, and the principle of American Exceptionalism that derives from it, matches little “raw” philosophy as it does Nietzsche and Smith. One might even think there is some “eternal recurrence” of our political reactions against creeping statism by appeal to the values of the Founders.

Pastorius: I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be disagreeing with you about. I’m quite not sure he saw nihilism as a “fact of life.” In The Will to Power he describes it as “normal,” but he seems to be saying it is normal in modernity, or the modern world. If “fact of life” implies universal or inevitable or inescapable, I would want to disagree with that.

A great post and an interesting thread. It is an interesting thought exercise to think about “libertarianism” in relation to “nihilism” particularly in the amoral approach in both philosophies. It does not reflect well on our libertarian friends…

I would like to hear more about your equation of nihilism and libertarianism. I suspect that it is a specious equation since much of libertarian thought is based on an epistemology and ethical philosophy.

Mises, Rothbard, and Rand each developed a political philosophy that emerged from axiomatic reasoning that purported to be every bit as absolute as an ethics based on religion.

Perhaps what you object to is any form of ethical reasoning that is not based on religious absolutes? Can you provide any evidence that demonstrates that libertarians actually argue for nihilism?

“Nihilism is the mockery of the good”. Yup. Any system of thought that relies solely on the intellect will lead to nihilism. This path we’re on started with the Enlightenment and “rationalist” philosophy. Makes we want to learn more about David Hume.